The element of mystery is unfortunately never developed here, but the romance is subtly handled, and the book is charming in...
English romance author Summers (Monday’s Child, not reviewed, etc.) fashions a pretty, triangulated saga around a young woman’s inheritance of a country cottage.
When Jasmine Wyatt’s employer Giles Devenish dies, inexplicably bequeathing to this 20-year-old secretary an overgrown cottage in the village of Horton, Jasmine leaps at the chance to escape the confines of her stuffy home in Bristol. Her mother having died in childbirth, Jasmine has been raised by her overbearing, censorious father, Owen, and her kindly, conventional older sister, Grace, as they work the family haberdashery shop in Bristol. Head-strong, impetuous Jasmine and her father lock horns constantly. The cottage, it turns out, is charmingly rustic, though bearing a curse since the previous tenants died in the house after eating poisoned mushrooms; moreover, someone has thrown red paint over the front door, as if to scare the new visitors. The fright is mitigated by the kindness of the estate agent, William Hedges, who shows Jasmine around the place. William, an attractive bachelor, gets Jasmine’s blood up when he takes jabs at her high-heeled city shoes and urbane condescension. William’s unmarried aunt, Mrs. Lester, is just about Owen’s age, and when Owen is persuaded to come stay in the cottage for health reasons, he finds he rather likes the elderly socials and country ways of the villagers. Back at the Bristol shop, Grace, shockingly, has been romancing the family doctor and plans to marry him and settle in Scotland, while Owen, who swore he would never get over his dear departed wife, is moving in on Mrs. Lester. It’s only fair in the end to offer our feisty heroine a chance to set down roots as well, and it happens in the form of a proffered job at the local day-care center and some heavy hints from William.
The element of mystery is unfortunately never developed here, but the romance is subtly handled, and the book is charming in its simplicity and clarity of plot.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7278-6411-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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